Two Scottish schoolboys out for a hike one morning came to a cliff overlooking the sea. As they stood admiring the scenery and listening to the breakers below, they heard in the distance the blast of a hunter's horn, the baying of hounds, and the beat of horses' hooves. A hunting party on the trail of game, they thought. And they were right. Soon a deer rushed out of the underbrush panting with fear, obviously the object of the chase.

The boys watched the terrified animal pause at the edge of the cliff as if debating what to do, whether to jump for its life into the sea below or run to the left or the right. How the boys wished they could help it!

Suddenly, the deer turned sharply to one side and sped away along the edge of the cliff, quickly disappearing from sight. The boys knew that the hunters would soon arrive in hot pursuit. "What shall we say if they ask us which way the deer went?" the younger boy said.

"Oh, we'll just say we don't know," replied the older one.

"But that would be lying," the younger objected. "We don't want to do that."

Then, just as the hunters arrived on the scene, an idea struck the older boy that solved the dilemma. When the hunters asked if the boys had seen the deer and which way it had gone, he said, "It's not fair to ask us. We're on his side."

A simple story, but how profoundly suggestive of Christ's care for His people here on earth! And how reassuring. He's on our side. The Bible says so, in just those words. Read Psalm 118:6, NEB: "The Lord is on my side, I have no fear; what can man do to me?"

During an Army war game, a Commanding Officer's (CO) jeep got stuck in the mud. The CO saw some men lounging around nearby and asked them to help him get unstuck. "Sorry, sir," said one of the loafers, "but we've been classified dead, and the umpire said we couldn't contribute in any way."

The CO turned to his driver and said, "Go drag a couple of those dead bodies over here and throw them under the wheels to give us some traction."